i. i asked, show me you.
ii. i don’t mean the unwinding of your scarf, pointing to where you keep the box cutter and the staples. that swirling grey chasm, the marrow of your chest: you hold all the sharp things you can bear. i mean — take off your scarf, and pick up my fingers. press them to the stars on your shoulders.
iii. i mean can i feel your ribs, can i touch where your bones split like plum blossoms over a maw of veins and can you
put your mouth against my hair and tell me about the instrument you played in middle school marching band? what it means is i’m listening. your fingers are soft again now. in bright sunrise pink, i hear echoes of the lines the newsprint left.
iv. show me where the words all settled. too deep in those churning-churning foam waves of your gut. behind the silver bell in your ear. i want to know, how did you brush your hair when it was long? what colour chalk did you use for your
backyard rangoli? i wish i had known you then. i wish i had known you forever. we could’ve played in the sand together, fought over toy trains — fingers sticky from the same plastic bowl. i should’ve been there, you know. chalk between our palms of rainbow fingers. my laughter pressed up next to yours like one shoe of a pair. i wish i had known you longer, because one day this world will end. power lines will sink into stars like syrup. these curves of boiling rock, they’ll rewrite what it means to THUNDER
and i will want you, still.
v. i put metaphors where my mouth should be because the sunset or the supernova is easier. isn’t it? i’m a cartographer, bleeding scarlet over ink on parchment. soft-curled edges and seams of wonder. my mother does not raise a hand to me when i long to hold yours. i never throw up beside the hull, splinters between my teeth. the sharp side of the blade is only for girls with black-lined sad-eyes. electric guitar. i play acoustic.
vi. what i’m saying is — when you scraped your knees on the concrete, did it hurt?
vii. oh, god. it hurt didn’t it. i’m sorry for pushing you. forgive me, promise; i do. please don’t let me cut my hands off with the strawberry knife.
viii. what i’m saying is — i know. to outgrow the nest like a cuckoo hatchling, not a dove. spit insults from your beak. collect the light that glints on rust. you know
we can never go home again but you still soak your hands in acetone, trying. a swallow of fading light from the porch window. it goes down like wine, which i only take in dreams, and not at all without you.
ix. here, give me your wrist. i know — the skin over those veins is bare. me too, hey?
i know…
i know. both our dreams are full of blood. open wounds soaked in darkquiet purple. that hollow purple, that swallow cry, the interstate too soft. you take the call between baby teeth, nostrils leaking ichor.
x. let me pretend i’ve left the lighter at home. can i bend closer to your face. can i think of kissing you one day, not think of dousing my teeth in kerosene. can i hear the song they played at your sixteenth birthday. what did you dream of when they whisper — paradise?
i say this is mine: waterfall from a fairy story. the next neighbourhood’s gardens, blanketed in promise. my school’s empty music room. lullaby
piano. humid air, endless summer. hot milk.
what i mean is do you know how to stop hurting i think this might kill me
xi. i say: and yours?
Aman Bibi Gray
Aman Bibi Gray is a writer based in Durban, South Africa. Their work has been published in Rigorous Mag, The Parliament Literary Journal, and others. They were a highly commended finalist of the 2023 Woorilla Youth Poetry Prize. They are particularly fond of writing poems and short stories which explore the liminal spaces of identity. If not writing, they can be found creating other strange things, like stitches and chords. More of their writing can be found on their website, https://aman-bibi-gray.neocities.org/.
